Singapore coach slams SEA Games organisers over scheduling issues

Singapore U-22 football coach Richard Tardy has hit out at the organisers of the 2017 SEA Games in Kuala Lumpur after he was informed to attend a press conference at the eleventh hour.

The event was held on Sunday morning (13 August) for all the football coaches to address the media ahead of the football competition’s opening round of matches on Monday and Tuesday.

Originally scheduled to start at 11.30am at the Renaissance Hotel in Malaysia’s capital, the press conference only began close to noon. Yahoo News Singapore understands that the officials from the Singapore team were only informed about it 30 minutes before.

The press conference also began without Tardy, who only joined it about two minutes in. When asked to give his thoughts about Singapore’s preparations for the SEA Games, Tardy offered an apology for being late, before sarcastically calling the competition “well organised”.

“Some people only said to me now that we have a press conference,” said Tardy. “It means that it (the competition) is very well organised. This is a big competition, so I am very sorry.”

The issue is the second in two days that the Singapore football team has faced. On Saturday, they were forced to missed their training session scheduled at 4.30pm after arriving at their hotel late. They eventually trained at 7pm at the Inspen Bangi stadium.

The issue, it appears, is not unique to just the Singapore team.

Thailand also missed their training session yesterday, which was scheduled for 6pm at the same venue. They had it rescheduled to this morning, and was only informed of the press conference after the training session had been planned.

As a result, Thailand coach Worrawoot Srimaka did not turn up at the press conference, with team manager Wantanya Wongopasi standing in.

She said: “We have training this morning, so the head coach is not able to come to the press conference.

“Actually, we were informed that we have the press conference after the training has been planned for this morning, so that’s why he did not show up.”